The Spirit of Time
by blackmoodring
Summary: I am back! This is a 3-part story told in many chapters! It's been 3 years since Phantom Planet and when Vlad Masters returns from space, everything is about to change for Danny's present and future. Things get even worse as a new evil ghost named Speira comes from the future and claims Danny is her father. Pairings: VladxDanny SamxTucker DanixEmber ClockworkxOC JazzxOC JackxMaddie


Part 1:

Chapter 1

Danny stared at his bedroom ceiling and thought about how some things just don't make sense. Blue strawberries, for instance. Nobody has ever seen a blue strawberry and he wasn't sure if it was even possible. Another thing that doesn't make sense is Danny himself. Danny, a practically half-dead boy who should've completely died when he was fourteen years old and now had altered DNA and ghost powers instead. In one powerfully painful accident in his parent's ghost portal, he became a whole new type of being. He wondered for a brief moment if maybe he was no different than a blue strawberry, and if so would a fried strawberry turn blue in the ghost portal? Did strawberries have ghosts? He wasn't sure, not that it mattered.

"What are you thinking about?" His girlfriend, Sam Manson, asked him as she kissed his hand. She looked content laying under the covers beside him and Danny gave her a small smile.

"Strawberries." He tells her honestly. She chuckled and rolled her eyes at his odd answer before closing her eyes and moving to fall asleep.

"I love you, goodnight." Sam tells him, her face looking peaceful as she let herself succumb to sleep's loving embrace. Danny didn't answer, feeling a terrible twist in his stomach at her words. Was this how he was supposed to feel? The seventeen year old boy looked over his hands and upper torso, and despite years of waiting for this moment, he felt no different. Danny again thought of things that didn't make sense, like how Danny had just lost his virginity and somehow it had felt almost wrong.

He cared about Sam, and thought he loved her. In a way, he did. Sam was great to him and for him, they'd been dating for over three years now, and she'd been his best friend for way longer than that. So why wasn't he feeling the way he expected to after making love to her? It wasn't like how he'd heard other people describe the aftermath, where you'd feel closer to the other person and were floating on air. He just felt like he usually does with her, comfortable and familiar. Like a pair of warm socks after getting home. Is that what love is supposed to be like? Danny looked at his sleeping girlfriend and thought over his history. Sam was his first and only, so it's not like he could know for sure in comparing her with any other girls.

Danny then thought of his future for a moment. Being an astronaut and coming home to a thirty-year-old Sam, maybe as a local politician fighting for social rights, wearing a black pantsuit. Maybe they'd have a child running around playing videogames. What was unsettling was how foreign such an idea of the future felt to Danny, to live the rest of his life with Sam in such a way. It was in that moment Danny knew an undeniable truth. Danny knew in his gut as he stared sadly at his girlfriend that there's a reason strawberries just aren't blue.

"What do you mean you want to break up!?" Sam said as she closed her locker, shocked at Danny's seemingly sudden proclamation. Danny quickly looked around the hallway to be sure nobody was listening, preferring to keep this moment as private as he could in a public place. It had taken him a whole month after sleeping with Sam to finally work up the nerve to break up with her. Danny knew deep inside that them being together in a romantic way felt wrong, and that while wanted Sam in his life he didn't want her in it that way.

"It's not y-"

"Don't!" She cut him off. Sam was shaking a little, looking confused and hurt. "Don't say the cliché 'Oh it's not you, it's me!'"

"But Sam, it is! I love you so much, but I don't think I'm in love with you… It's not fair to keep you in this relationship when I know we want different things." Danny tried to explain.

"Different things!? What does that mean!? What do you want, Danny?" Sam asked, crossing her arms and trying to not cry.

"Well… I'm trying to figure that out. I know though that I want us to stay best friends, because you mean a lot to me." Danny pleaded. Sam stared at him a moment, studying his face before taking a deep breath.

"I need time away from you for a while first. I just… I can't be around you right now." Sam said quietly. Danny nodded, showing he understood before she walked away from him. He felt so awful right now, but couldn't help but shake the feeling that he did what he needed to do. After a few minutes as he headed to his own locker, his other best friend, Tucker Foley, caught up to him.

"So… I see you finally took the plunge." Tucker said, clearly having been updated on what just happened between Danny and Sam. Danny sighed and nodded. Tucker was the only person who knew this whole time that Danny had been trying to find a way to break up with Sam. "I still don't get it, what went wrong between you two?"

"It wasn't that anything went wrong necessarily, I just knew that we weren't really meant to be together in that way. Can we not talk about this? I kind of feel like crap about it right now." Danny sighed and then the ground shook with a loud crash coming from outside.

Tucker looked to Danny quickly to catch a small bit of blue breath escaped his mouth, letting him know that a ghost was near. Tucker quickly tossed Danny the Fenton thermos as Danny quickly went ghost and was off to save the day again. Ever since he revealed his identity to the world three years ago after the disasteroid fiasco, Danny felt a lot better after not having to hide his secret identity anymore. He hadn't even thought much about the disasteroid since it happened, until right now as he phased through the walls to outside to find none other than Vlad Plasmius. Well, if someone has stuck Vlad Plasmius in a weird ripped up purple prison jumpsuit and threw him in a lion's den for six months.

Vlad was significantly more buff than the last time Danny saw him. Vlad's hair had been seemingly cut shorter, his hair had also somehow gone from black to gray. Vlad had also grown a goatee, his jumpsuit was terribly ripped at the shoulders, torso, and knees as if he'd been attacked by a wild animal. Danny also noticed the broken chain and cuff link on Vlad's right arm as he flew to the other ghost still laying on the ground from the crash. Danny was shocked, thinking that surely he'd never see the older halfa again. Danny felt a feeling in his chest then that was frightening, as if he'd missed Vlad.

"Plasmius!?" Danny said, trying to sound like an authority figure. However, even as Danny looked at the other halfa, he knew there was no way that he was a threat right now.

"Daniel. You've grown taller." Vlad barely managed to get out before phasing back into his human form and promptly passing out. Danny could hear students watching and murmur to each other at the odd scene in front of them as Danny got a better look at Vlad Masters. His skin was covered in some vicious looking scars, his silvery hair had nearly gone snow white. Vlad had also gained an extra wrinkle or two. Danny briefly wondered how he could've aged in such a way in only three years, and suddenly found himself having questions he wanted answers to. So, Danny promptly picked the man up and flew off quickly towards his home. It occurred to Danny as he flew the muscular man off that he should just let the proper authorities take Vlad away for everything he's done, and that Danny essentially going to hide him from that didn't make any sense. Then again, a lot of things don't make sense.


End file.
